


we've grown up with white skies

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character, Alternate Universe - Canon, Comment Fic, F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon doesn't think of Arya as being pretty, or much of a girl, even, but she is now. Everyone says she looks like Jon. Everyone says Jon is pretty, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we've grown up with white skies

Snowfall at The Wall isn't like snowfall elsewhere, it doesn't change the landscape, doesn't make things new and fresh and blinding white. Up here, it's always white. The flakes fall heavy and the sky turns from grey to black and back again, the dusting of stars fading in and out like a hazy dream Jon's not sure he's had. He is the watcher on The Wall. He is tired.

She starts off as a black speck in the world of white, dirtying the blank spaces with her footsteps, her stumbles and her annoyed little yells. She starts off marching briskly, exhaustedly towards The Wall, thin sword held out in front of her.

(Except that's not really true. She starts off as an angry babe who teethes on Sansa's hair and pulls on Robb's ears and smiles wide and toothless when Jon picks her up; Lady Catelyn lets him hold her, because she cries too much otherwise, screaming hoarse and unmanageable already. She turns into a dark head that looks like Jon's, and look's like their father's, who runs on pounding little slippered feet and stands on tables and peeks over the edge of the forge in the armory, watching the hot stone get hotter. Then, at some point, her wails turn into words and she's cleverer than all of them put together, sometimes, he thinks, or else just teeth that bite and snarl and smile when he tells her good jests.

She's a pair of eyes and a toothy grin and then one day he gives her a sword and a hug and she is gone.)

She starts off as a black speck and she turns into a black smudge, and then to a rather grey and brown and ragged mix of sound and shouts and demands for her brother.

"Jon," is what she yells, "I'm here, Jon. I came." They have to tell him later, though, because even though her voice carries to the top of The Wall, he can't make out the words. It doesn't matter, not really, it's all just howls and noises that mean not much more or less than _Arya_. Arya, his little sister.

 

\---

 

She's grown older and quieter and she frowns more and knows more about war movements and battle plans than half the men at The Watch - men who leer, _pretty little girl_ , they say; or men who want her out, _no women at The Wall_ , they say; and men who don't know what the to do with her, that's most of them.

Jon doesn't think of Arya as being pretty, or much of a girl, even, but she is now. She's not beautiful like Sansa, or even Robb, not like her Lady mother, she's got the stern brow of Eddard Stark and the dark eyes, too. Everyone says she looks like Jon. Everyone says Jon is pretty, too.

She still has the sword - _Needle_ , she says, _needle, remember?_ He doesn't - and she barely lets go of it. She takes it to meal times and sleeps with it in her private bunk - lock on the door, Ghost at her feet, just in case - and even bathes with it close by. Jon half-reckons she's more of a warrior than he is.

A man, drunk and stupid and tired of the cold, tires to rape her once, and she cuts both of his hands clean off. He lies bleeding out on the white snow and Jon's the one who finds her there, sitting next to him, reciting a list of names. She tells him what happened in a bored voice, like this is old news, and he could go and get Maester Aemon to come bandage the man, to keep him alive - it would be the _honorable_ thing to do - but he just stands there, watching the thick, dark smudge of her hair against the pale backdrop. She's not beautiful.

"Have you killed a lot of people, Arya?" he asks, when the man is finally dead.

"They deserved it," she says quickly, defensively, and he can tell then that she's not as strong as she pretends to be. She's wild, still, and far more vicious than ever before, but she's still a Stark, and she's still almost a child yet, and she still stares at the dead raper for far too long after he's died. "Could you tell them it was an accident?" she asks, not looking up at Jon.

"He accidentally fell and cut both of his hands off?" he asks, skeptically. He's still not sure if he's completely registered the fact that his little sister is sitting quite calmly next to the dead body of a man she's just killed. The thought is floating somewhere, formless in the back of his mind.

She shrugs. "It could happen," she says. "Swords are tricky things."

 _Needles, too,_ he thinks, and takes her inside, gets her a warm cup of tea and cleans off the thin blade.

 

\---

 

She comes into his room at night, silent and quick like a shadow, has learned how to pick a lock like a seasoned thief at some point, and he only gets one glance at her dark outline in the doorway before her knees are on the bed beside him and the straw is sinking beneath her weight. He's very silent and very still, too still to be asleep and he knows that she knows, and he knows what she's going to do, but for some reason he doesn't try to stop her, just stays frozen as she leans over and presses her cold, chapped lips to his.

Her hands are small, though larger than they had been, when they shove his furs aside, trailing down his chest with blunt, quick little nails that dig in deep and make him feel warm in the cold room, and strangely hollow.

When she climbs into his laps is when he stops her, pressing back against her shoulders and shoving her off his mouth.

Maybe it says a lot and maybe it says nothing in particular, but the first protest he makes is, "My vows, Arya." She ignores him, fingers too fast for him to catch and lips getting warmer with every touch. He shoves her back again, and it's not a hard shove, but it's enough. "You're my sister," he tries, like he's reminding her, like she's forgotten. "What about Father? Is this how you would honor his memory?"

Arya's got her sword with her, her Needle, even now. One hand plays along the blade at her side. "What's this have to do with Father?" she asks, in that childish voice she'd always used when she'd been denied something she'd wanted - lessons with the Master-at-Arms or a bow of her very own or a bear that she'd seen in the forest and wanted to tame; so many wild, wrong things, maybe this shouldn't be such a shock. "I've already honored Father," she says, fingers still gliding up and down the sword.

He thinks of her lists, of all the blood that sword has seen, and thinks she might be right. He won't say so, though. He doesn't know what to say.

Her hand trails lower down his chest and he shivers. "Don't," he tells her, deiciding it's as good as anything.

"Will you cut my hand off if I do?" she asks, head quirking to the side curiously. He can see her teeth and he thinks they could break him, thinks maybe he wouldn't mind. She's still the little girl who he'd known, in so many ways, and he doesn't know if that comforts or disgusts him.

"It isn't like that, Arya," he says, frowning. He doesn't shove her away and she doesn't lean forward, not this time.

"What's it like?" she asks.

The snow is heavy on the roof outside, making the building creak with age. It's so, so white out there and dark in here and her skin is as pale as his and her eyes are the same color, and she looks like his father, she really does. "Go back to your bed," he says, and kisses her gently on the temple.

She looks at him for a long, long time, still straddling his legs, and then goes, as quietly as she had come, a grey shadow in the early dawn light. She looks at him with something far too clever in her eyes, though, from the doorway, and it's not until she's gone and locked the door behind her that he notices that she's left her Needle in the bed beside him.


End file.
